A blog on Cuddalore. CuddaloreOnline contains 'developement oriented' news about Cuddalore, new projects that can be taken up for the development of the town, status of ongoing projects, comments and photographs of Cuddalore. You can also find posts dealing with several aspects of urban planning & design and other issues of general interests (esp.environmental issues). Subscribe for newsletters and join the CuddaloreOnline group.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

An article on the revolutionary business man from Cuddalore that appeared in LiveMint.

--The sachet

When schoolteacher Chinni Krishnan made a career change to run a pharma company in the early 1970s, he had a simple business plan in mind: making medicines affordable to the common man. His factory in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, made medicines and healing salts packaged in 5g packets that were otherwise available in the markets in 100g packets.Krishnan may not have known it then, but he laid the groundwork for the sachet concept, India’s biggest marketing revolution. Years later, in the late 1970s, his son C.K. Rajkumarextended the concept by introducing Velvette-branded shampoos in sachets at affordable price points (as low as Rs2) and creating an addressable market running into millions not touched by sales of the product in bottles. Rajkumar’s brother C.K. Ranganathan(present chairman and managing director of consumer products firm CavinKarePvt. Ltd) came up with a product, branded Chikshampoo, stretching the market size even further.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu) (IANS): Over 100 tribals of Tamil Nadu's Narikkorava community held a demonstration here Wednesday, demanding the right to vote, police said.

"This near illiterate gypsy tribe could not cast their votes so far due to their nomadic character, though they were issued ration cards 10 years ago. We are assuring them all help this time," a police official said after persuading the tribals to give up their protest.

"We have a history going back thousands of years and are as much citizens of this nation as others. Yet, we have been marginalised, termed untouchables and (have) never voted. Now we want to assert our rights," a spokesman of the group, Domba Raja, said.

The state's Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta said the poll panel will look into the community's grievances.

"We are particular that nobody should be denied the right to vote and will take immediate action if representations from this group reaches us directly or the district administration," Gupta told IANS on phone from Chennai.

The tribe's origins are traced to European Roma gypsies and to several others from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Orissa, according to accounts published by Edgar Thurston in 1909.

According to the police, most members of the tribe live in Tamil Nadu and parts of Kerala. They used to be trappers and hunters, but hunting has now been banned. One of their traditional handicarfts is the making of bead garlands.